Pianist Sean Mason brings his quintet-era sound to the Side Door's 80 seats

The Blue Engine Records pianist behind The Southern Suite and A Breath of Fresh Air plays Old Lyme's jazz room on Friday, December 11.

There are jazz rooms where you hear the piano, and rooms where you can watch the pianist's left hand decide what the band does next. The Side Door in Old Lyme is the second kind, and in December it gets a pianist worth watching that closely.

Sean Mason plays The Side Door Jazz Club on Friday, December 11, at 8 p.m. Tickets run $25 to $55 through Eventbrite. The date went up Oct. 26. The room holds 80, so seats at a club this size on a Friday in December are not something to leave for the week of the show.

Mason is a pianist, composer and producer who arrived fully formed on record. His debut as a leader, *The Southern Suite*, came out in October 2023 on Blue Engine Records, Jazz at Lincoln Center's in-house label, and was produced by Branford Marsalis. He recorded it with a quintet of young players: Tony Glausi on trumpet, Chris Lewis on tenor saxophone, Felix Moseholm on bass and Domo Branch on drums. The lead single was "Closure."

He followed it in 2024 with *My Ideal*, a duo album with singer Catherine Russell, and then with his second album as a leader, *A Breath of Fresh Air*, released Oct. 24, 2025, on Taylor Christian Records. Reviewers keep landing on the same point: Mason, still in his mid-twenties when that record came out, writes and plays like someone who has spent a lot of time with jazz history and wants to add to it rather than recite it. Tunes like "Duende," "Boneback" and "Capital J" show the range.

The room has earned its reputation the same way. The Side Door sits inside the Old Lyme Inn at 85 Lyme Street, the creation of innkeeper Ken Kitchings, who bought the inn with Chris Kitchings in 2011. It opened in May 2013 with Newport Jazz Festival founder George Wein leading the Newport All-Stars, and within two years it was being named among the top jazz venues in the world. Since then it has booked jazz's established names alongside young players on the way up, mostly on Friday and Saturday nights.

At 80 seats, nobody is far from the piano.

It helps to know how the night works. The club doesn't serve food, but there is a full bar, and the inn's dining room is right there for dinner before the downbeat. The inn has also sold packages that combine a room, dinner, show tickets and a drink, if you would rather make a night of it and stay over.

Old Lyme is not where most people expect to hear one of the more talked-about young pianists in jazz, and that is part of what makes this one good. On December 11 you can hear him from a few feet away, in a room that was built for exactly this kind of night.

Sources: Sean Mason — Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Blue Engine Records announces Sean Mason's debut album The Southern Suite — Jazz at Lincoln Center (press.jazz.org); The Southern Suite — Sean Mason (official) (seanmasonofficial.com); A Breath of Fresh Air — Sean Mason on Bandcamp (seanmason.bandcamp.com); Sean Mason: A Breath of Fresh Air — Making a Scene (makingascene.org); Side Door Jazz Club — CTvisit (ctvisit.com); Old Lyme Inn opens its new jazz club, The Side Door — LymeLine (lymeline.com); Out and About: Big sound, intimate space at Side Door — The Day (theday.com); Sean Mason at The Side Door Jazz Club — JamBase (jambase.com); Tickets — Eventbrite (eventbrite.com)